All Fall Down
by Helvetica Black
Summary: Bella Swan was gone. Long gone. She was desperate to die, and when she finally killed herself, she left me to pick up the pieces of her broken life. ME, of all people! I never even liked her.


**I. TAKE THAT, BELLA SWAN!**

We weren't even that close.

I looked at the unwrapped package on my bed, the one that had been sitting on my doorstep this morning and was addressed to me, and all I could think of was, _why_? Why would she send _me_ this? Didn't she have other people to haunt, people that actually went out of their way to hurt her? What did I do to deserve _this_?

The answer to that last question was obvious: _Nothing._ I'd done absolutely _nothing_ to deserve the truckload of emotional baggage that sat on my bed.

From its unceremonious spot on my sheets, Bella Swan's diary seemed to stare back at me, taunting me: _Read me. Read me. Read me._

I would've left the package alone if I'd known what it was, if I'd known who sent it, what was in it. I would've sent it right back to the post office, or thrown it away or something. I did not want to have a dead girl's freaking diary. But I was curious because the tag didn't have the sender's name on it, and now the thing was unwrapped, its wrapping torn to tiny pieces that were definitely impossible to put back together.

As soon as I saw Bella's name and the word "diary" written on the cover, I immediately dropped the thing. It had been two hours since, and I couldn't bring myself to touch it again.

It gave me the creeps.

I stared at it from the edge of my bed, not knowing what else to do. The sides of its cover were worn, the pages already beginning to brown. I wanted to throw it away, or maybe send it to someone else — someone who actually knew Bella Swan well, like her dad maybe — but I couldn't. I didn't know if she'd written bad things about me in there. And if I threw it away...

No. I couldn't. As creepy as it was that Bella Swan had sent me her lame-ass diary, as much as I didn't want it anywhere near me, I couldn't just throw it away or pass it on to someone else. Not without knowing what was in it. Not without knowing why she left me with her secrets.

It was curiosity. Although I guess it only made sense that I'd be curious. When Bella threw herself off a cliff and killed herself last week, she didn't even leave so much as a suicide note.

Not that there was any mystery at all in her suicide. Almost everyone in town knew what happened. The Hair broke up with her, and she lost it and became a glorified vegetable. She got so weepy that she just decided to give up on life and dive into the sea in the middle of a November monsoon. A morbid parody of "drowning in tears," I guess. Hardy-har, har. Then she died, of course. Which was obviously what she wanted. End of story.

I'd attended her funeral yesterday. Her coffin was closed — I heard it was because her face had been half-eaten by fishes. Lauren heard from Tana who heard from her boyfriend Spencer. Spencer's dad owned the only two funeral parlors in Forks.

People cried that afternoon. Even the people who never even talked to Bella Swan when she was alive. Even Lauren, who to the best of my knowledge, hated Bella with a passion that bordered on psychotic. She'd made fun of Bella every chance she got, and her crony Gemma did the same. But when they saw Bella's coffin, they cried like Bella had been their best friend. Hypocrites.

Admittedly, I'd also done to Bella some of what Lauren and Gemma did. I'd even made verbal jabs at Bella sometimes. That was just what I did when I didn't like people, and I never liked Bella Swan. Unlike Lauren and Gemma though, I didn't cry and blubber like a baby when they lowered Bella's coffin to the ground. I didn't do anything to disrespect the dead, but I just didn't cry. Why would I? It wasn't a requirement. She'd been dumb enough to hook up with a stuck-up rich boy, and she decided to die all on her own. Why would I cry for her? That was just flat-out retarded. Nobody bullied her into killing herself or anything. Lauren, Gemma and I were mean, but not that mean. Besides, around the time that Bella went vegetable, we weren't even hanging out with her anymore. So I didn't cry, because I just wasn't sad. I pitied Bella (a little), but I didn't mourn her death. It was that simple.

The Hair, though, he freaking _mourned_ all right. I had no idea how he knew about what happened to Bella or who told him, but there he was, making a scene as he waltzed into the crowd and tried to open Bella's coffin. He probably didn't believe she was really dead, the only person in the crowd that didn't. He would have believed it pretty easily if he'd been around these past couple of months. And it's just my opinion, but if he'd be so devastated by her death (since he was obviously still crazy in love with her, only a blind person wouldn't notice), then he shouldn't have left her in the first place. Idiot.

Not that it was his fault that Bella Swan was stupid enough to kill herself.

In a minor scuffle with Chief Swan and some Quileute boy, he'd accidentally knocked the coffin off its pedestal and it fell open, its contents free for everyone to see. God. What I saw that day will give me nightmares for months, and will probably stay in my mind forever.

After that little stunt, he sobbed uncontrollably like a little kid. I can't believe I even liked him. He was pathetic. Then he just sagged on the ground like a sack of potatoes and let the cops (who'd been there to attend Chief Swan's daughter's funeral service) drag him away to God knows where. Until now, no one knew where he went off to. Probably hid somewhere to kill himself, too. I wouldn't be surprised. He and Bella had been quite the couple.

I glanced at Bella's diary, slowly picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy.

Now what? The thing was so thick, it's going to take me ages to finish reading it. But then, I didn't really need to read the whole thing. Just from the day she started living in Forks. I leafed through pages of Bella's annoying handwriting and found just the right date.

* * *

_**I met a weird boy today.**_

_**His name's Edward Cullen and he sat next to me in Biology, and I can't figure out why he kept acting like I'm the plague. Maybe**_

* * *

I slammed the notebook shut and gritted my teeth.

Figures. Everyone in school had been so interested in her that day that it made me _sick_, and all she remembered about the day was The Hair. It was exactly the thing about her that annoyed me. How could someone could get so much attention and be so _clueless_? Or did she just not care? Somehow that thought annoyed me more. I'd worked so hard to be "it" in high school, to be good at everything I can be good at, to be smart and athletic and the Student Council president and the captain of the volleyball team, while all Bella had to do to be popular was show up in her baggy outfit, a tattered Macbeth in her hands. Freaking _Macbeth_. Who even wanted to be seen reading Macbeth anymore, when Shakespeare was so obviously generic? But even with her terrible poser-ish taste in books, people still thought she was a bookworm. Right. I bet she'd slept with Romeo and Juliet under her pillow. It was just so Bella. Not that her terrible fashion or her shallow taste in books had mattered at all when it came to the boys. They'd just adored her. Her long silky brown hair and doe eyes were enough. It had been infuriating.

It was still infuriating.

I took a few deep breaths, hating that Bella Swan could make me feel like crap even from beyond the grave. She didn't even have to be alive, for Pete's sake.

I threw the diary to the far corner of the room. It hit the beige wall and crashed to the floor with an unceremonious thud.

"Take _that_, Bella Swan!"


End file.
